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Ex-Wife Testifies In Pasco Doctor's Child Porn Trial

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By ELAINE SILVESTRINI | The Tampa Tribune

Published: July 8, 2008

TAMPA – A Port Richey pain doctor repeatedly visited the Internet to view and download photographs of children being sexually abused by adults, a federal prosecutor told a jury today.

Richard Carino is standing trial on six charges of possessing and receiving child pornography after investigators say they found sexually explicit images of children as young as 6 on his home and office computers.

Carino's former wife, Autumn, testified she married Carino in March 2004 after her previous husband died. Carino was living with her and her two young children, she said, when in July 2005 she saw him viewing child pornography.

She said he was using the computer in the middle of the night, and about 2:30 a.m., she got out of bed to see what he was doing. When he saw her, she said, he minimized what he was viewing on the screen.

But she said she saw the name of the Web site and a couple of days later, she went to the site. "I saw a little girl, a little girl, very young, giving oral sex to a middle-aged man," she said. "I vomited. It made me physically ill."

She said she didn't immediately confront her husband because "I guess I wanted to be in denial. I didn't want to believe, and because Richard had a very strong personality. I knew I would have to be very careful in my words."

She eventually confronted him, she said, and he acknowledged viewing child pornography. She said she asked him to get help. "I wanted to believe Richard's reasons," she said, without explaining. "I didn't want my marriage to end. I wanted to fix his problem."

Then, on July 19, 2005, law enforcement searched Carino's medical office where Autumn Carino was working. She knew Pasco County Sheriff's Detective Bill Davis from previous investigations of patients at the practice.

Autumn Carino said she told Davis about the child pornography, and she took him to their home, where he looked on the computer. Assistant U.S. Attorney Laurel Moore told jurors Davis made copies of the hard drives of both the home and office computers.

Then, on Aug. 26, 2005, she said she caught her husband viewing child pornography on the home computer, and they argued. She called 911, and her husband wound up being arrested on a charge of domestic violence.

Jurors were not told, but that charge was dropped after Richard Carino entered a pre-trial diversion program.

Defense Attorney Charles Medlin, through his questioning of Autumn Carino, suggested others could have been responsible for the child pornography. Autumn Carino testified under cross-examination, that the office computer was in an open area accessible to several people. The home computer, she said, was in an area of the house accessible to her and her children.

Autumn Carino denied she or her children viewed child pornography.

Medlin also elicited testimony from Autumn Carino, who filed for divorce in October 2005, that she was cited for contempt in her divorce proceeding because she gave a safe and sold weapons to the Outlaws Motorcycle gang.

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